


A Tick on My Wrist Keeps You Forever in My Heart

by Kisleth



Category: Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: Angst, Developing Relationship, F/F, F/M, Get Together, Grief/Mourning, M/M, Multi, Mutual Pining, Requited Love, Soulmate-Identifying Marks, Soulmates, Unrequited Love
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-11-07
Updated: 2014-11-07
Packaged: 2018-02-24 11:00:03
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 9
Words: 2,810
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2579162
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Kisleth/pseuds/Kisleth
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>based on this tumblr post <a href="http://kisleth.tumblr.com/post/101972862670/jaxtellerhelps-tuckedshirts-pretendersrpa">au in which every time a person falls in love, a red line like a tally mark appears on their wrist</a></p><p>Note: All pairings are self-contained in labeled chapters. You don't have to read them all to understand what's going on. I don't mind if some of these pairings aren't your cup of tea.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Clint/Phil Pt. 1

**Author's Note:**

> Firstly, if you can think of any relevant tags that should be added, please, please, please let me know. It's late and my brain is fried and I really just wanted to get this posted for all of you.
> 
> Secondly, huge thanks to jo for the beta!

Clint will openly admit to himself to being too curious for his own good. He’s eavesdropped and spied and used his eyesight to his advantage to learn what he can about everyone. The more he knows, the better he can protect himself. So of course he hides everything he can behind a laughing face and a middle-school dropout’s IQ. SHIELD, when it takes him in, doesn’t agree with this bullshit, so the fake IQ goes. He does agree to the common band worn around his dominant wrist—like so many others—to hide the tallies.

Clint doesn’t have too many, and he can remember every person who he’d loved. Elle, one of the acrobats from Carson’s, had been his first love. Her mark on his wrist is faint now, just a raised scar after she’d died falling from the heights she loved. Bobbi’s is grey. They had loved and married and divorced; on some level they still loved each other, but it wasn’t enough to warrant a deep black mark. Natasha’s was red, as red as her hair. He admitted to her once that it was hers and she had, in turn, shown him her blank wrist. She was proud of it and it felt wrong to Clint. His heart ached for her, but he said no more. If she was happy that way, then he would be happy for her.

Another mark is trying to come in on his wrist, just faint pink now. Clint, for the life of him, is so deeply in denial about the feelings he has for his handler that he doesn’t even know who the mark is for.

 


	2. Clint/Phil Pt. 2

Phil Coulson prided himself in being bland and easy to forget. It worked greatly to his advantage. He liked it when he pulled one over on someone, defying their expectations. It gave him a little thrill. So when he appears outwardly right handed, since he writes and shoots primarily that way, and people look for his tallies—they find none. He doesn’t let it show that he’s ambidextrous, or that he really does prefer using his left hand. It’s just one other thing he can use to throw people off.

Paired with his long sleeves, he doesn’t wear the black band around his wrist like most other SHIELD agents do. Sometimes the cuffs ride up and shows his blank wrist and people leave it at that. He won’t reveal the red tally on his wrist, the one that is darker today than the day before. Phil’s not quite sure what it means, but it tingles whenever Clint’s hanging out in his office.

Some days, Phil lets himself hope.

 


	3. Steve/Bucky/Peggy

The most unnerving thing about the future for Steve is not technology or the wars they’re fighting or how expensive everything is. It is unnerving, don’t get him wrong, but what unsettles him most is the tallies on his wrist.

For the longest time he’d had one, black and forbidden, but he hadn’t cared because Bucky had had one right back. They’d double dated for show and came home every night to each other and it was enough. And then Bucky joined the Army.

Steve had followed, how could he not? And there he had gained a second mark for one Peggy Carter. He hadn’t seen Bucky again until after, after so many things, and Steve had two black tallies. Bucky had looked resigned and Steve nearly shook some sense into him because their mark hadn’t faded, not one bit. Before Steve went into the ice, Peg and Buck each had an additional mark in deep pink, slowly growing reddish-grey. Before Steve went into the ice, one mark was a scar.

After Steve came out of the ice, Peggy’s mark was faded… and Bucky’s was blood red.

 


	4. Thor/Jane

Thor asks Darcy one evening about the tallies on her wrist. She has a lot and she’s not afraid to show them off. A lot of them have faded to the grey of old-loves but she does have two in a deep pink. She tells him animatedly about how pink—depending on the vibrancy—is either a growing love or an old/fading one. That black is requited love, and grey is a requited love that has faded. That a scar is a lost love, someone who had died.

Thor knows Jane has a black one on her wrist, one she hadn’t had when they met, one that he’d kissed. He thanks Darcy for her help and seeks out Jane, stealing a pen along the way. He gently interrupts her from her work and presses the pen into her hand. He smiles up at her from where he kneels beside her chair and thumbs over the mark on her wrist as he holds up his own.

Jane doesn’t draw the mark on his wrist until after she’s thoroughly kissed him. Thor is completely okay with that.

 


	5. Tony/Bruce Pt. 1

Tony wears long sleeves and doesn’t like to be handed things. Both hide his wrist. He also doesn’t take his shirt off as much as he used to. He knows it’s not completely a tally thing (Afghanistan left its own scars, visible and not), but those marks certainly make his life a lot harder. He tries not to count the neat little sets of five because then the staggering number will overwhelm him. The tallies are why he had started doing one-night stands, but even then sometimes it would add another red mark that would slowly, painfully, fade to pink.

The tallies are too neat for his messed up life. He ignores them and welds without gloves, hoping that burn scars will marr them, but they shine right through any scar he gets. He hates it. He hates every mark because it proves that his heart is even more fragile than it visibly is. His father had ground into him that it was a weakness, showed him his own blank wrists with pride. Tony had already had two marks by then.

The day Tony meets Bruce, he knows. He can feel the tingle on his wrist and he checks it as carefully as he can to not draw attention to himself. It’s hard, however, because of how high he has to push his sleeve up. He braces himself for the red mark, for knowing there is heartbreak on the horizon.

He nearly collapses when he sees it’s not red. It’s _black_.

 


	6. Tony/Bruce Pt. 2

Bruce’s wrist had been blank ever since he exposed himself to Gamma radiation and gained his other self. It was as if the Hulk gave his wrist a clean slate, but it was a curse more than a blessing. Bruce couldn’t tell if he was just afraid to fall in love, or if gaining his other form made it impossible to love at all. His wrist never gained a mark, not a single one, even though he was sure he loved Betty, and she had a mark for him. Her mark was red.

Sure that the Hulk had broken him, Bruce never looked at his wrist expecting to find any marks there ever again. He ran, he hid, he kept up to date in his field as best as he could. It was all he could do, and if he took pleasure in reading about Tony Stark (not the trash in the tabloids that he couldn’t get his hands on if he wanted to, but in science magazines he lifted from street vendors whenever he could), then that was his business and his alone.

It’s not a big shock, but still a shock when he’s found again. SHIELD had apparently been keeping tabs on him. It is a shock that the woman who finds him has a wrist as blank as his and proudly bares it. Except… except his wrist isn’t completely blank. There’s a faint line, a line that doesn’t go away when he Hulks out and Bruce can’t be sure as to _why_.

He gets his answer on the Helicarrier in a lab while trying to locate the Tesseract with Tony. He’s hyper-aware of the other man and doesn’t miss it when Tony slowly, sneakily pushes up his sleeve, revealing rows and rows of neat, pink slashes. So many old, unrequited loves. Tension in the air around them is thick and makes Bruce feel uneasy as he focuses hard on the numbers before him, pretending he isn’t watching Tony out of the corner of his eye.

The last mark to be revealed, a new row for more lines, is on its own and a deep, solid black. Tony slumps a little against the table with his hip, a faint tremble in his hands that Bruce recognizes too well in himself. He lifts his hand to shove his curls out of his face and his eyes lock onto it. A single black tally, one he’s sure wasn’t there before. He looks at Tony, his hand dropping away and Tony is staring at him. When did he start staring at him?

Captain America joins them before they can talk, before they can confirm what they already know: the marks are for each other. (Much later, after the cleanup from the Battle of New York is nearing completion, they confirm that the Hulk has a black tally on his wrist as well.)

 

 


	7. Natasha/Darcy

Natasha had learned at a young age to never fall in love. It made you vulnerable, gave the world a person to use again you. You couldn’t hide that you loved someone romantically, the proof was plain as day on your wrist. She prided herself in that the creamy white skin of her wrist remained unblemished for years. She met many people she could have let herself fall for, but she never gave in, never caved, even after she left the Red Room behind her, even when she gained freedoms, even when she joined SHIELD. She never let herself love.

‘Love is for children’ she reminded herself. ‘Children are innocence, which I am not.’

She kept this belief firmly in her mind throughout her years and felt no qualms about it. Until… until she met a lovely young woman who insinuated herself in the life of the Avengers as Jane’s friend (and still sometimes-intern) and Phil’s new personal assistant. Darcy is bright and bubbly and everything Natasha doesn’t let herself be. She is also blunt and wild and Natasha’s first impression of her is childish innocence.

One late night after a movie night, the two of them being the last ones still on the couches, she confesses that first impression. Darcy laughs so hard she snorts and falls off the arm she’d been perched on. Natasha finds it oddly charming and can’t keep the fond smile off her face, it grows when Darcy flushes and looks away.

Darcy doesn’t complete her. She’s not some half a heart looking for the other. She is whole on her own, thank you very much. But Darcy is a lot of things Natasha is not, and it’s refreshing. She is a complimentary piece and Natasha enjoys her company. She doesn’t feel intimidated by the 20-odd tallies on Darcy’s wrist, trailing up her arm, nor does she think too hard on it when two of the marks fade from red to pink during their progressing friendship—nor when a new one appears, growing redder each day.

Natasha does think too hard when a muddled grey-pink mark appears one day on the inside of her wrist and Darcy’s red one is a little darker too. Not just because of what it means, but because she hadn’t even known it had happened until Darcy had pointed it out. It’s not too late, she could fight it, could tamp and trample it down into nothing and have an unmarred wrist again.

The hope and excitement in Darcy’s face when she first saw the mark stops her from even trying.

 


	8. Steve/Bucky

They don’t explain the raised grey line on the inside of his wrist. They don’t explain when it changes as time passes. How much time has passed? He doesn’t know. They don’t tell him either, They just make him learn new things, kill new people. He does it without question. He is not made for questions.

The line is no longer raised like a scar now and he finds himself running a metal finger over it idly, wishing he could feel the difference instead of just seeing it. He doesn’t realize that he’s started to do it, but he catches himself one day with his lips to the small line, feeling the dips and rises of muscle and tendon, but no scar-esque mark under the grey.

One day it’s less grey. He doesn’t know why, but it is, and it’s a day after he’s dreamed. He doesn’t remember the dream but he feels less cold because of it.

He doesn’t remember the dream after They wipe him again.

And again.

And again.

He recognizes a man on a bridge. The mark is darker than ever before and he asks about it. He can’t help himself. He asks about the man, why he recognized him. They cut him off before he can ask about the mark. It’s a good thing, he doesn’t want to talk about the mark with Them anymore.

He sees the man again, he fights him. He learns a name, he learns about the marks. It overwhelms him. Terrifies him. He punches the man until he falls from the tricarrier, memories swarm him and without moving consciously, he finds himself staring at the mark on his wrist, the mark that is flickering. It gets blacker, then greyer, then raises from his wrist slowly. He panics and dives into the water after the man and drags him from the depths.

He leans in to press their mouths together, to help him breathe again, but the man coughs and he leaves before the blue eyes can open. He runs away and holds his wrist tightly, the mark no longer raised, but darker than he can ever remember it being.

It turns black when he goes to the museum and remembers. He doesn’t go to Steve, not yet. He needs to find answers, find out what happened to him, to avenge himself, redeem himself.

Steve knows he knows. If his tally is black, then Steve’s must be too. Steve will know that he is Bucky, mostly, once more. Steve understands, Steve will wait. James can feel it in his bones and in the beat of his pulse under his black tally.

 


	9. Clint/Phil Pt. 3

Clint realizes it far too late. He berates himself in his grief for figuring out things too late, for not seeing how in love he was with Phil. Only he could be so deep in denial that it would confuse his tally and keep it from coming in. He wraps the band tight around his wrist and doesn’t take it off, not even when he’s in the shower or to put his shooting glove on.

It’s because of this that he doesn’t see that the mark has turned black. It’s because of this that he stumbles walking into the common room on the shared floor. It’s because of this that seeing Phil standing there makes him collapse, makes him cry, makes him think he’s seeing things.

But Phil strides (with a cane, oh god, he’s still hurt but he isn’t dead) over to Clint and drops to his knees in front of him with a swallowed grunt of pain. Apologies fight their way up Clint’s throat but he can’t voice a single one of them as Phil wraps him up in a warm embrace, stroking along his spine and murmuring reassuring things into his ear. Clint slumps, unable to hold himself up at all. He slides his hand up Phil’s back and cups the back of his head to keep him close.

Opening his eyes slowly, his eyes lock onto his wrist and the solid black line where Phil’s mark had been growing in. He pulls back and gropes for Phil’s right wrist, looking but finding nothing. He doesn’t realize that the broken, distressed noise is coming from his own throat until Phil’s hands cup his cheeks and smear his tears with gentle thumbs. He can’t stop the tears or the whimpers, but Phil continues to comfort him and instructs him to push up his left sleeve.

Clint does as he’s told and his breath halts when he sees marks there, including a black one that he knows is for him. Despite Phil’s injury and obvious frailty, Clint surges forward to meld their mouths together, kissing Phil with every bit of passion and frustration and love he can muster. He’s still gentle and doesn’t hurt Phil in the slightest despite his enthusiasm.

It’s the kiss of a lifetime, one he hadn’t known he’d been waiting for until it was nearly too late.

 


End file.
